Richard Brown, Professor, University of Southampton

Electrosynthesis is a powerful tool for chemists, allowing access to many reaction types, and in some cases without reagents or catalysts. Despite the clear benefits, electrosynthesis is seldom used in academic or industrial labs, in part because electrosynthesis has not been available in a convenient to use format. Although electrosynthesis has been practiced for many years for selected applications, recently, microfluidic electrochemical flow reactors have emerged as a convenient platform for laboratory electrosynthesis.
Despite a number of interesting electrosyntheses in microfluidic devices, much of the literature reports productivity rates of mg/h, which limits the use of the technology. Recent advances have demonstrated that with careful design of the flow path, flow rates could be dramatically increased, leading to productivities of multiple grams per hour without affecting conversion and yield. The latest results in the development of extended path length microflow electrolysis cells will be discussed, illustrated with interesting scalable synthetic examples, such as C-C bond formation, fluorination and oxidative esterifications and amidations.